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In the 1980s revival of the Twilight Zone franchise, alien invaders arrive with the news that they created the human race as an experiment and that it will be terminated in 24 hours unless the earthly inhabitants can get beyond their "small talent for war."

Crash negotiations at the United Nations produce a global peace agreement, proudly presented to the alien leadership—who mockingly deliver the devastating surprise that this "small talent for war" fell short of the invaders' original hopes of an even more bloodthirsty species of human warriors.

In Europe, leaders have arguably believed their monetary union experiment depends on an ability to overcome a "small talent for printing, borrowing, and spending money," whereas in reality their masters—the omnipotent but arbitrary financial markets—truly want more of all that, at least in the near term.

Friday's rally in risky assets following Europe's gestures away from short-term austerity talk and toward a Continentwide bank-supporting and central debt-buying plan supports this market preference, as does the hope by market bulls that the European Central Bank will opt for yet easier money in its meeting this week.

The excited reaction also showed how badly the markets wish to quit worrying over every finance minister's whisper, and just how little investors had been conditioned to expect heading into this, the 19th European Union summit since the debt crisis flared in 2010.

In U.S. stocks, Friday's 2.5% gain in the Standard & Poor's 500 index to 1362 brought it quite close to the level where it sat the first week of July one year ago, when it traded as high as 1356. Of course, a year ago, the market also seemed to have survived a springtime gut check and sidestepped an imminent Euro-meltdown when Greek authorities seemed to forestall default.

As we now know, the market promptly took a nasty turn within weeks, thanks to the U.S. debt-ceiling impasse, Treasury downgrade threat, and another round of Euro-debt and slowdown fears.

So, does this symmetry doom the markets to another summer of disappointment and macroeconomic malaise? Based on the evidence at hand, no.

Most obviously, there will be no maddening game of Congressional chicken over the debt ceiling this summer and the Treasury's credit has already been downgraded, to little tangible effect. Neither the coming election nor the subsequent "fiscal cliff" expiration of stimulus measures carries the kind of chaotic, short-term, mutually-assured-destruction implications as last summer's flap.

In terms of below-the-surface financial indicators, greater caution is evident today compared with last year, suggesting the markets would be better insulated against more sober news. Ten-year Treasury yields, at 1.66% now, are half year-ago levels and emerging-markets equities are lower by 18%, as measured by the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF. The Bloomberg Financial Conditions Index is at healthy levels but not at the complacency-hinting heights of this time in 2011 and 2010.

Interestingly, while the S&P 500 is about where it was 12 months ago, Brent crude oil is down 12.5%, industrial commodities have been crushed and the euro is 12% weaker against the dollar over the same span. This challenges the common view that stocks would merely move in lockstep with those other easy-money beneficiaries, and like them would suffer without more of the Federal Reserve's quantitative-easing generosity. Finally and not trivially, U.S. stocks are a bit less expensive today based on past and forecast corporate profits than they were last Independence Day.

Tim Hayes, of Ned Davis Research, told clients before Friday's surge that, "when digging into the details of the technical, sentiment, valuation, and economic factors" prevailing today versus in 2011 and 2010, this year looks a good deal more like the less ugly 2010 pattern. Hayes believes the market is undergoing a "bottoming process" that should result in renewed strength in the second half.

Of course, the S&P has already lifted 6.6% from the early-June low, is up 8.3% year to date and sits just 4% beneath the year's peak, leaving unclear how far such second-half strength might carry things. One missing element in the comparisons with prior years is the more advanced age of the bull market, the economic expansion, and the corporate-profit cycle.

What it means is that investors should look hard for any signs of the ravages of age. Careful investors should thus shift attention from Europe to this coming Friday's employment report and impending corporate-earnings releases. Unless those measures are sprouting more gray hairs, this summer's stock market could well be cause for celebration.